[ female announcer ] bld a bundle that's right for you. at&t. ♪ we saw like fire coming from down. it's behind our backyard. and it's like all lights. i thought this is judgment day. >> these are the grim scenes of devastation in the san bruno neighborhood. nowearch crews are looking for more victims of last night's deadly inferno caused by a ruptured gas line. >> here's the latest on the fire. four peop have been declared dead, at least 52 others injured, including at leas four who are in the hospital with critical burns. four firefighrs have also been taken to the hospital. officials revised the property damage downward. they say 38 homes have been complely destroyed and seven others have serious damage. >> so far the fire burned 15

acres in san bruno's crestmore neighborhood. it's now about 75% contained. san brun police are declared the entire burn area a crime scene in order to secure it and the national transportation safety board has sent what's called a go-team to help investigate what caused the explosion. >> here's a live picture from above the devastation. youan see that crater, the 15 foot crater caused by an explosion now filled with water. overhead showing a smoky scene. firefighters still putting water on hot spots and account for missing people. live in san bruno avenue. terry, so many people not sure what happened to their homes. >> they're not sure. when you take a look at the epicenter thereof that 15 foot crater in the middle of all there where the natural gas explosion occurred, yo get an idea how sudden it was, how strong it was. people had to leave their homes immediately. here is the incident command

center. you've got firefightersrom a number of jurisdictions, poli as well, ambulances standing by just in case now, take a look at video from a short time ago. cadaver dogs searching the wreckage for more victims. and there are more who don't know if their house is still standing. somewhere in this picture is where the picari family hones a home but don't know if it's stil there. >> we have a hom right in here someplace. >> rht here? >> hopefully we have a home there. >> antoinette's daughter is praying there's somethin to go back to. >> my whole childhd is there and they've got all their papers and pictures and documents. everything is there. >> when will they let you in? >> we don't know. that's what i'm waiting to find out. >> thosetwo and everyone else is wonderi how could this hapn? the national transportation safet board is dispatchg a go-team made of up investigators to try to find the cause. pg&e says it was their 24 inch natural gas pipe that blew

sending flames 1,000 feet into the air incinerating 38 homes and damaging seven. >> you could feel the heat coming through the window. we started to see the window crack from the heat. and when i stepped out into the backyard, i could see the stucco popping off my neighbor's house behind us. >> the blast left afoot deep crater and ruptured the adjacent water main. when firefightersrrived they had no water pressure in the hydrants and had to wait 15 minutes before they fought the fire with tanker trucks. the investigation into what went wrong has not really begun. >> we've yet to be able to get close enough to the actua source to be able to determine exactly why this happened. but we are working diligently to do that. >> as for reports that resints have been reporting the smell of natural days or even weeks out here, pg&e says they're checking their records. initial estimate of the damage

done in this neighborhoodruns to the tens of millions of dollars. theeath toll stands at four. both of those numbers may change. live in san bruno, terry mcsweeney, abc 7 news. mark matthews is in san bruno to tell us about the state of emergency declared bit lieutenant governor. mark? >> the lieutenant govern is here. also a state senator, state assemblyman, congressman jackie spear, quite a lineup of civic leaders coming to talk about what has happened in san bruno. his heart goes out to the victims. >> we know a natural g line ruptured yesterday around 6:2 p.m. but we don't know what caused it or what happened. we will find ou soon it the state of emergency wi allow state funds to pay for the cost of fighting the fire. san bruno mayor told reporters a dark cloud hangs over his city. >> you've heard the numbers.

but what we have to deal with in the very near future is the stress, the anxiety, the uncertainness in the minds of all of the people that are directly affected. >> congresswoman jackie spears says she will set up a district office. >> we will file claims for insurance and i'm calling upon all the state insurance companies to create desks at the evacuion site so they can begin that process as well. >> ste senator leland yee and assemblyman terry hill both describingan bruno as a unique, close-knit community. the number of homes damaged a destroyed in the fire is much lower than what was reported last night. san bruno fire chief provid the latest count after walking through the neighborhood this morning >> our latest count which we finally did a walk-through, 38 homes destroyed and seven with significant damage.

i think last figures we had prior to that were duri the heat f the fire and we did a fly-over and i think there was a lot of smoke, a lot of distortn that maybe the homes weren't damage but the smoke covered them and it may be assumethose houses were damaged. >> with me acting governor maldanato. we heard you say you don't know what happened but what is your office dog to find out what happened and find out from pg&e what was wrong with that pipe? and that's the most important thing right now. we've got an intergroup looking to find out what happened. we have a 30-inch pipeline 40 feet underground that was 60 years old. we need to find out what happened soon. it's a crimescene. we're going through, trying to keepconstituents -- i know they want to go see their home, see their property. but still there's a huge safety concern at the site. >> we asked pg&e th morning if

there had been problems they were unable to tell us. we heard neighbors say they smelled gas in that neighborhood. have you been able to get any information on either of those points? >> i'm at the same point wre the neighbors are. we heard from neighbors they smelled gas for a week or two. some say ten days. i wanna know who they called and what the response was. san bruno isn't the only ci in california that has 30-inch gas pipelines to their homes. >> has that neighborhood bn outfitteds with smart meter >> i can't answerthat. there's a lady that came up to me. she's miss being three loved ones. i don't know my heart is broken. it's still a problem, a safe concern. >> let me explain the smart meter question, if you have meter readers checki on the meters, they might notice the gas. if they're sma meters and they're being electronically read, yu don't have those

people in the field. >> i don't know. that's a question we have to ask. pg&e n answer that question, obviously. we want answers. we want answers. i can tell that you on behalf of the state of califoia and the city of san bruno. we put all our resources here last night. we all cam together. now it's time to help folks, get 'emback on their feet. people are donating clothes, food, water. >> a lot of people out here trying to help. i really preciate you taking the time to talk with us. thank you very much. >> all right. reporting live from san bruno, mark matthews. >> the lieutenant governor had to declare the state of emergency because governor schwarzenegger is out of the country and has made his first official commt on the san bruno explosion and fire. he did it on twitte he got briefed by lieutenant governor maldanato. glad i left the state in good hands. so far it' the governor's only commentn the disaster. >> as you might imagine, the fire knocked out power to the area. at the hght of the fire, some

5,000 pg&e customers were without electricity. pg&e says power is still out to about 700 customers. about 300 customers are without gas and three at&t cellphone towers are running on emergency power skyline cllege does have power and is holding classes this morning. all elementary schos in the san bruno schoo district are closed as well as parkside intermediate. but constantine no high school is open and offering brief counselors to any person who needs to talks. the san bruno residen badly burned were taken to san francisco hospital in san francisco. hoping you have information about the victims' condition soon? >> yes. very soon we're going to have a news conference here in less than half an hour. four people were brought here from peninsula hospitals because their burns were too severe to be eat there had and, of

course, they have the exper cease here. they were brought in last night. they've been treated at san mateo county hospital to stabilize their conditions. most notably they're breathing and doctors were standing by hereo treat them with the expertise and burn care and to manage the pain that they have. they've been working with the victims overnight. we have the latest information on their condition. >> one person is in stable condition with serious burns, and three patients have critical burns that are stable. they meet burn center criteria which mns they have a significant burn or the emergency department physicians and teams in the bay area and pretty much all emergency deparents are the trained to recognize a level of burn that is beyond their expertise and that is when the burn center is here to serve. >> she says treatme can be extensive and may take months depending on the seriousness of the burns.

no indication the hospital is going to receive anymore patients. >> expecting from the burn specialist doctors here, probably around 11:30. they say at this hospital it's medical treatment mixed with compassion live in san francisco, do sanchez, abc 7 news. >> don, thanks a lot. fema halls just announced it authorized funds to battl the fire. affected residents can get all sorts of help at two red cross centers of that been set up. insurance,edical care and loans. laura anthon is live at the veterans memorial rec ceer with available resources and incredible stories of escape. laura? >> that's righ kristen. i can tell you first of all only about a dozen people actually spent the night at this shelr but let me show you what it looks like right now. come this morning, many, many more people showed up. these are all folks who have registered as fire victims. they are taking advantage of the donations othat been made here

throughout e night. clothing, pillows, blankets, food and the like. you can see there's quite a demand. in the meantime these folks also shared their stories. >> it's indescribable. indescribable! >> she woke with the sun to failshe reality of what happened to her and her neighbors just 12 hours earlier. >> we heard th boom. and then all of a sudden tere was a light. like coming from heaven or something. and we didn't know what it was. and my son sails you bett get out of here, you goods get out of the here. >> me and my brother caied my grandma down the street. >> walter lived on claremont drive. >> trying top get out, the whole house was full of fire. crazy. within 20 to 30 seconds our hou was on fire so i thank god giving our faly a second chance live. >> can't shake t image of a neighb boy badly burned. >> i took one of the kids because he had skin just falling

off of him. and he's in critical condition. i have friends that work in the e.r. that says he's at st. francis and he's goi to be the five months and saw his girlfriend die. >> by midmorning more th 100 people registered here as fire victims making them eligible for everythg from a free pancake breakfast to insurance counseling and mental health servic. >> you gotta do what yo can do. >> and there was an outpouring of support from the community as people dropped off blanks, pillows, food and clothing through the night. >> hopefully maybe whatever, we're in a situation we helped out others and there's people to help us out. >> spent the nht with relatives. they came to the shelter for informati about their pet bird and home on fairmont just a few doors up from the explosion. >> luckily we already had our garage door open. >> saddened about all our neighbors that c't go back home. >> it's going to be very hard to

see the devastation. >> back live here at the red cross shelter. these are families and individuals who have registered as fire victims. they are now going through all the things donatd by the community, gathering whatever they need. sort of an interesng dynamic here. the red cross says at this point they prefer people do not drop off anymore hard goods but instd go to their website and make a monetary donation. as you can see there's quite a demand for hard goods. people have been bringing them all morning. i guess the red cross was telling peopl not to drop thing off. today they're accepting things. people are taking what they need. due to the scale of this disaster, they will keep the shelter open for at least a couple more days. live in san bruno, laura anthony, abc 7 news. >> laura, thanks. blood centersay that local hospitals actually do have enough blood right now for all the victims of this fire.

burn victims though often need plasma for surgeries. they need o negative blood in the days ahead. they urge you to wait until next week to donate. to find out where, go to our webte at abc7news.com. you can see pictures and videos by our viewers. >> we want to share some of the photos our viewers sent in from the san bno fire. let's take a look. these are from the height of the fire yesterday. firefighters there and you can see those flames just really roaring as the gas fueled it. if you have video you wanna share with us, please upload them. video pictures are fine. we'll be right back with the latest on the effor to knock down what flames remn. >> and just ahead there was another emergency day involving pg&e, this time in san francisco. we'in their lives

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>> no explanation from pg&e about smoke from manholes in the financial district. they received reports of smoke around 7:30 this morning. fire crews told pg&e they saw smoke but no fire. only one customer lost power and that incident is under investigation. >> president oma said this morning a florida pastor's plan to burn copies of the quran

september 11 must be taken seriously because it could cause profound harm to u.s. troops and interests all around th world. yesterday pastor terry jones suspended his plans to burn the holy book on the deal to stop the construction of a mosque in new york. the backers of that project says there's no deal. now jones says he won't follow through with the burnin only if he's able to meet with the mosque organizers tomorrow. right now the organizers say they hae no plans to meet with jones. >> mike nicco ahead with te forect. >> so far the firefighters haven't had much to deal with as far as winbut we'll talk about how that will change tonight and the

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>> so far the weather conditions have been fairly flavorable for the firefighters. >> absolutely. all you have to do is look outside and see the absence of fog. keeping the sky rather still. finger fog trying to push through the golden gate which mea the marine layer will return tonight. the breezes will pick up also as those clouds push back in. let's take a lo what's going on right now. we have a northeast wind around 3 mph. relative humidity pretty high. the temperature going up to 68. thanks to the lack of a sea breeze. we will see east winds about 8 to 20 this afternoon and that west wind will kick in tonight around 1 to 20 mph. also raise the humidity up to

about 100%. been fairly favorae for the firighters to contain that fire. for the rest of us mostly sunny today, the warming continues. it will be cloudy at the coast. most of us will be clear tonight. a few clouds may linger around the bay and sunny and seasonal through the forecast. 76 sunnyvale to 82 los gatos. on the peninsul low to mid-70s with low 60s and sunshine along the coast. sausalito in the low to mid-70s. low 80s the north bay valleys with low 60s at your beaches and sunshine. 69 richmond. low to mid-70s the east bay shore. warm and not hot, no need for the air conditioner. santa cru watson vil, salinas about mid-70s. mid 60s monterey. tonight 49 santa rosa. the rest of us low to mid-50s. morning clouds folled by afternoon sunshine. temperatures remain the low 60s at the coast. mid-70s around the bay and

mid-80s inland. >> and stay with us. we are waiting for a ♪ [ female aouncer ] introducing tv... you can take with yo u-verse now ts you download, watch hit tv shows and scdule recordings on your mobile phone. order u-verse tv tod. plans starting at just $29 a month for six months, with dvrncluded. plus upgrade to u-verse u300 and get the u-verse mobile ap. take the u-verse tv experience with you and record up to four shs at once from any room on a single dvr and play them back on any tv in your house. ♪ order u-verse tv today. plans starting at just $29 a month for six months, with dvr included. plus upgrade to u-verse u3 and get the u-verse mole app free. verse mobile and u-verse tv.

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>> today son oprah at 4:00, will and jada pinkett smith -- we're going to continue our team coverage on that gas line blast that destroy a san francisco san uno neighborhood. we're going to update you on the victims, the investigation, how you canhelp. and 7 on yo side's michael

finney will explore the insurance issues that residents are going to have to face in order to rebuild. you're looking a a live picture of the area where fireghters are still trying to ma sure that they're keeping on eye on the hot spots there. they have cadaver dogs in there looking for more possible vic